Hillary Wilkinson: (00:00)

Attention, learning, and digital media are all areas of specialty for today's guest. She has published empirical work on overstimulation in children's media and the effects of that TikTok-style content that we are inundated with on young adults' learning and attention. All of these areas are kind of getting huge amounts of media coverage right now, as we see sweeping bands of laptops and tech and classrooms being regulated. I'm super interested to hear what the latest and greatest research is on this. Welcome to Healthy Screen Habits, Sarah Shepherd.

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (01:04)

Hi. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

Hillary Wilkinson: (01:07)

I'm super excited you're here. Sarah. The topic of learning and the role tech has to play in educational settings is a super hot one. I'm sure you probably don't even tell people exactly what it is that you do, unless you wanna get embroiled in a massive conversation. Yeah. But, uh, what, what made you want to explore it?

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (01:32)

Yeah. I actually started off as a preschool teacher, uh, for my first job. And seeing how kids engage with tech has been super formative to like the way that I think about my relationship with screens. Um, you know, like, huh, if I don't want this 3-year-old to be sitting here on their screen at preschool time, like maybe I shouldn't be on mine all day either. Like, what is this doing to my brain? Which really, um, spurred me on to do my PhD in these topics, thinking about how these devices might be shaping our attention, right? Not just, um, the moment-to-moment stuff that we're thinking about, but does it change the way that our attention system adapts? Right. Does watching TikTok make you need more? Um, especially with little kids who are still learning how to control their attention and develop their attention.

Hillary Wilkinson: (02:24)

Your research challenges this sort of core assumption in EdTech and media, that if a kid is glued to a screen, they must be learning from it. And what did you actually find out about this relationship with the engagement of digital media and learning?

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (02:54)

We all know that attention is like, required for learning, right? You can't learn something if you're not paying attention to it. Um, but as tech has kind of changed to try and capture more and more engagement, right? Most platforms rely on engagement metrics to, you know, suggest top content or drive ad revenue, right? The more views you get, the more money you make on YouTube, for example. Um, so the question kind of came like, okay, well, is it a good idea to be promoting stuff to kids that is maximizing their attention, right? Is it a good idea to be using this metric of engagement to create content for kids? Um, and we see, I mean, most parents would know that you can see a kid that's on an iPad or watching a screen that's kind of zombied out, like kind of zoned out, but they look totally glued to this screen.

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (03:46)

And so we actually tested, when you get a kid to really pay more attention to a screen, do they learn more? And we actually found that the more they paid attention to screens when there was fun, cute, colorful videos of puppies and paint mixing and sparkles, um, they learned less from those videos. So we're actually finding that probably these kids are getting overstimulated, which makes them look like they're learning and paying attention and focused, but actually they're learning less. Um, and they're overstimulated, which could have these kind of downstream harms for things like developing healthy attention.

Hillary Wilkinson: (04:25)

Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about this whole thing of overstimulation for a minute, because I have literally been at concerts. I mean, like, like rockstar concert. I'm gonna talk, I was at Benson Boone, okay. Gosh. When he was, gosh, was in LA.

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (04:42)

Okay. Amazing

Hillary Wilkinson: (04:43)

It was, it was a very good show. Um, so I'm at a show that has all the razzle dazzle, I mean super, you know, hot performer of the moment, et cetera, et cetera. And there were kids in the crowd in front of me that were choosing to scroll over, focusing on what was going on, onstage, live right in front of them. Wow. Like, what, what I’m all. Can, can you unpack that for me? , I just, I I remain baffled by that type of thing that I see, or, or parents who literally, I mean, clearly we're in Southern California, I, I am using a lot of SoCal references. Yeah. But literally being at Disneyland with a toddler who has a tablet in their lap and a stroller mm-hmm. Like, and they're choosing that over the, you know, being at Disneyland, which for a kid is kind of a pinnacle moment, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So what, can you talk about that.

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (05:55)

Yeah, yeah. It does kind of seem a little backwards, right? Mm-hmm. It's like, it's, it's much more interesting and great to talk to people or, you know, look for Mickey Mouse at Disneyland, right? And, you know, the, the other side of it is that these pieces of tech, these digital media companies, you know, have some of the greatest minds in the world who know how to capture attention using that and kind of weaponizing what we know about attention against us. In some ways, it's kind of this race to the bottom to like, who can capture the most attention, right? On YouTube, TikTok, whatever it might be. And if you can hold the attention, you kind of win in this, in this digital space that we're all operating in. And little kids, especially, are not equipped to handle that.

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (06:41)

Um, you know, adults have more developed attention systems. We have some people call it executive function, where we have a lot more developed ability to shift our attention away from things as we want, as it kind of fits our needs and goals. Little kids are still working on developing that. So these sort of bright and shiny fun to look at features, maybe in, you know, CocoMelon on YouTube, for example, that are really colorful and engaging, um, are harder for them to look away from than it would be for an adult because they don't yet have that ability. They're still practicing it and developing it, which is why there's also more concern with exposure to that kind of media at those really young ages might not give you the practice that you need of shifting your attention away from things and learning how to disengage with stuff at the appropriate time.

Hillary Wilkinson: (07:31)

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because it does almost seem as though, I mean, that, that highly overstimulated place of the online playground, if you will mm-hmm . Is, um, a more comfortable place for a lot of kids it's a more comfortable place for them to be, rather than engaging in what's around them.

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (08:02)

Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of automatic and easy, maybe. Yeah. Um, which, you know, isn't always inherently bad, you know, it's good to have breaks and, you know, watching a movie or reading a book is kind of a, a similar break that maybe, you know, we would've thought of differently in the past. But, um, these kind of longer sessions where there maybe isn't a coherent story arc in some YouTube video that's really fun to look at is a different sort of, kind of turning off of your brain, so to speak.

Hillary Wilkinson: (08:33)

Right. Can you speak to that a little bit more about like, what, what should we make of the content that keeps kids glued to the screen?

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (08:42)

Yeah. Yeah. So we actually are finding evidence that it seems like being able to disengage, so like, look away from stuff, basically. Mm-hmm . Is really important to developing healthy patterns of attention that are supportive for learning. So there's like, super cool, I mean, I'm gonna get a little nerdy here, but there's really Please

Hillary Wilkinson: (09:01)

Do, I'm, I'm here for it. Buckle up.

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (09:04)

There's super, super cool eye tracking research with infants as young as six-month-olds. Um, and then like three to 5-year-old kids showing that kids actually are really good at paying attention to stuff that's gonna be the most useful for their learning. So kids look the longest and prefer to look at stuff that is gonna be helpful for their learning. And like, maybe you're familiar with the Montessori method, right? The kids approach things that are gonna be things that they're ready to learn from. Kids are super good at identifying what they can learn mm-hmm . And so when you then kind of hack that system with like these really colorful, you know, high contrast, fast motion visuals that are hard to look away from, it might actually create conflict with, with their ability to shift and look at stuff that's useful for their learning. So it might be that the kind of, Ooh, I'm gonna look at what I am good at learning about attention is actually in competition with the attention that's just like, ooh, bright and shiny fun to look at. Um,

Hillary Wilkinson: (10:06)

Which that to me is a, is even more frightening when you consider, like, not that I, I don't wanna come from a place of fear mongering, but, um, you know, I, we do kind of all have these, uh, gifts that we're, that that we come with, you know, each of our, each of our brains comes wired differently and everybody has some stuff that they're, they're good at mm-hmm . And if you are, that's, I, you know, you hear that phrase again and again with these devices that they're experience blockers, but with that blocking, I've never stopped to consider that you're actually, you know, you can be blocking the development even of finding out what you're good at, what you like to do, I mean mm-hmm . With, with learning, with attention, with anything mm-hmm . So it gets a little more insidious. Like the, the younger you go, I feel like the more like,

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (11:06)

Yeah,

Hillary Wilkinson: (11:06)

Careful. We need to be with this.

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (11:09)

Yeah. Absolutely. And I think especially, you know, it does seem kind of insidious with some of these, especially content creators on YouTube. A lot of it seems like AI now. I mean, we talk about like AI slop, and gosh, there's a lot of AI slop for, for little, little kids. Yeah. Um, and, you know, these algorithms that are powering these platforms really reward stuff that get high engagement. So if a little kid likes to sit there and watch it on their iPad and you know, then that tells the content creator, okay, make more stuff like this. So we really need to start having these conversations, I think about what constitutes quality content for kids, um, to start, you know, putting pressure to, to make better stuff for kids.

Hillary Wilkinson: (11:51)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. When we come back, I'm gonna ask Sarah a few more things specific to early childhood and what we're, what we're talking about. 

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HSH Workbook

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I'm speaking with Sarah Shepherd, who has spent the past several years getting her PhD and all the things we're interested about here in Healthy Screen Habits land. And Sarah, your most recent work introduces something called the Brain Rot Effect and argues that we all have an adaptive attentional bandwidth. I'm loving all of these new terms. So can you unpack what that actually means and what is actually happening to kids' attention when they're consuming fast-paced, that highly stimulating content that we were talking about?

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (13:09)

Yeah. So, um, this work, the on brain rot actually was inspired by some of the undergraduates I work with at Berkeley. Um, and they were telling me that they're using brain rot to study for their classes. So brain rot is like, you know, it can mean a lot of things, but in this case, they were using TikTok-style videos where there were two pieces of content, two different videos shown on one screen. So you would have, you know, someone telling a story or talking about a concept on one half of the screen. The other half of the screen is like someone playing a video game or cutting soap, or like these kind of fun to look at visuals that don't have anything to do with the content. Um, and so we were like, okay, well if they're paying attention to this stuff and using it to study, maybe then it actually is helpful for learning.

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (13:58)

Maybe we need to learn more about this. Um, and we actually found that students who engage more with that kind of content, these are college students, learn better from it, but they learn worse from traditional media. So it seems like there's this kind of this kind of cost. Yeah. So you have this like, bandwidth of attention and maybe you can shift that range upward to pay attention to this kind of super crazy stuff that most of us that aren't as online might think is really overstimulating. You could shift up and learn well from that. But it comes at the cost of not being able to learn well from more traditional or slower media.

Hillary Wilkinson: (14:43)

Would that, I mean, traditional and slower media meaning like books or

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (14:47)

Meaning like books even. So we showed them like just normal YouTube videos explaining a physics concept. So like, how do windmills work, for example mm-hmm . And they learned better when it was paired with videos of people playing video games than by itself. So this is still like a modern YouTube video that's pretty engaging.

Hillary Wilkinson: (15:07)

That's so interesting. I kind of, the only thing I can equate that to is I know when I have to lock in and get some stuff done. I actually feel like if I go to say a coffee shop. Or someplace like that, I can sit down and for some reason, having that kind of background hubbub makes me focus in on what my task is more so than if I'm sitting at home and, you know, my dog walks by or the laundry goes off or whatever. That's the only thing I can equate that to.

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (15:50)

That's exactly it, basically. Yeah. And so everyone maybe has kind of some level of like stimulation or, or stuff they need going on in the background to be able to really engage in a meaningful way with something. For a lot of us that might be listening to music while we work or working at a coffee shop, um, what we're seeing with young adults who have grown up in these really intense digital environments, they seem to need more, um, to actively engage. So in this case, like, you know, videos of really fast-paced video games playing on their screen at the same time, which is a new thing,

Hillary Wilkinson: (16:27)

It is a new thing. And it's totally counterintuitive to honestly, what we've been saying forever, which is like, you know, don't split screen, don't double screen, you know, and, um, this whole concept of, um, you know, multitasking is not a good idea for anybody, but I don't believe that that's actually multitasking what they're doing is they're, because they're not engaging in the video games, right while they're studying. Right. It's just they have this other stuff going. It's almost, it's almost like their brain needs that like, um, little bit of like, ramp up Totally. For like adrenaline to, to focus, you know? So it's almost like they, the, just as we've been biohacked by programmers, you know, to crave the dopamine and to crave the st I mean, they're figuring out a, a different type of biohack.

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (17:25)

Yeah. And, and so, you know, I think it's really cool that young adults know that they maybe need this because they grew up with this kind of tech to support their learning. But what we're seeing is that maybe engaging with lots of this really fast-paced content or short form content, like on TikTok, uh, makes it harder to engage with, with slower educational media later. Yeah.

Hillary Wilkinson: (17:50)

Yeah.

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (17:50)

Um, so trying to track this of, okay, well if little kids are watching a lot of this stuff, are they gonna need then all this other stuff to be able to pay attention in school later and, and

Hillary Wilkinson: (18:00)

Things like that. Well, and I already get the feedback from many of our friends in education who are just like, “I'm, I'm not interesting enough”, you know, , “they're like, me, me at the me, and a whiteboard is mm-hmm . Never gonna do it for these kids anymore.” Mm-hmm . Like, unless I had, you know, fireworks going off behind me and mm-hmm . But, you know, but like, I just go back to what we talked about earlier. If Benson Boone couldn't command their attention, I'm like, come on now. Yeah,

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (18:29)

Yeah.

Hillary Wilkinson: (18:29)

You know, so those downstream consequences are just like what you're talking about that, uh, that long-term ability for what I'm gonna call, um, deep focus mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. And, um, yeah. So I don't know. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I hear what you're saying, but I'm not convinced. Okay. . I'm like, I'm like, I dunno. Okay. So let's also talk about the content, um, that your work found being watched by children in lower-income families with this higher visual, um, “flicker”,  which means it contains more of those rapid, bright, shiny visual changes. And what, what can that tell us about equity in the digital wellness conversation?

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (19:26)

Yeah, so we compared content that's available to kids of different income levels, so free content, like on YouTube, and, you know, paid content like on Disney+. Um, and we found that the content that lower-income families have access to and that we know they're watching more of, um, is actually more likely to be overstimulating. So it's, you know, got these really rapid visual changes. It has more color and motion in it that aren't necessarily tied to a storyline or anything meaningful. Um, and that's really concerning because we know that that can disrupt learning and lead to possible harms, uh, later on, like disordered attention and things like ADHD. Um, so there's a lot of concern about the different kind of content that's available to different kids. Um, and, you know, it might even disre prepare some of these lower income kids for school later on, right? Like we were talking about with brain rot. If you need a lot of this added visual stuff to engage in deep focus or learning, it's gonna be a lot harder for you when you get to school. Right. Or even, you know, trying to have conversations in person or at Benson Boone, like your example. Right. So thinking about how this might be differentially dispreparing some kids for school

Hillary Wilkinson: (20:44)

Is really important. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of comparison with, um, in digital wellness that goes along with, um, nutritional wellness. And it just reminds me of, you know, the, lower-income families not having access to the more in-depth, slower-paced, you know, nature channel type stuff is the equivalent of the, the urban food deserts that we see. Yeah. And the junk food, you know, the junk food that may, may, um, stop hunger but isn't nutritionally dense, that is actually needed for these growing bodies and growing brains. So that, um, I find that very concerning.

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (21:38)

Yeah, that's a great comparison. Absolutely. Hmm.

Hillary Wilkinson: (21:41)

So we have to take another short break, but when we come back, I'm going to ask Sarah Shepherd for her healthy screen habit. 

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HSH Website

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We are back. And Sarah, on every episode of the Healthy Screen Habits podcast, I ask for a healthy screen habit. And this is gonna be a tip or takeaway that listeners can put into practice in their own home. What is yours?

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (22:18)

Yeah. So I think focusing on quality over quantity is really important and maybe a bit more practical for a lot of families. You know, screen time can be kind of unavoidable, uh, especially, you know, to use as a supplement for caregiving. Sometimes if you're trying to make dinner or do laundry, you know, and you just need a couple minutes. Um, you know, and I think thinking about the quality of the screen time and what kids are watching rather than just how much time they're getting on these screens, especially for little kids, is super important. Uh, we know that this is true based off of, you know, cutting edge developmental psychology research showing its effect for language learning and developing healthy attention systems. Um,

Hillary Wilkinson: (23:04)

Do you have any specific recommendations of what that might be like? You, you mentioned Coco Melon, which I've also heard referred to as Coco Meltdown. So , you know,

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (23:17)

Absolutely.

Hillary Wilkinson: (23:18)

That, that would be on the top of my “no” list would be Yeah. The Coco Melons. But do you have, um, like any of the slower form content that you would recommend?

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (23:30)

Yeah, so any content that's gonna be kind of less visually stimulating, we find using Computer vision, we've actually analyzed this, and Common Sense Media, who we work with, uh, has developed a tool that will be released soon, where you can actually analyze your own kids' content, um, to look for less stimulating stuff. Uh, so stuff like Bluey, for example, or Trash Truck, uh, are kind of popular low stimulation shows, um, or Arthur, old Disney stuff is great too. PBS is across the board really great. Um, so looking for stuff that has less of this kind of added visual craziness going on, um, which tends to be more like PBS content across the board.

Hillary Wilkinson: (24:14)

Sure. And like Thomas the Tank Engine. Yeah. Like old school style. Yeah, yeah,

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (24:19)

Yeah.

Hillary Wilkinson: (24:20)

You mentioned Common Sense Media. I just do need to make the disclaimer that Common Sense Media does receive funding from large tech companies, so mm-hmm. Yeah. Healthy Screen Habits does not, so we always, we always just wanna be transparent about that.

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (24:35)

Absolutely. Thank you.

Hillary Wilkinson: (24:37)

Uh, okay. As always, you can find a complete transcript of this show by visiting the show notes for this episode, and you do this by going to healthyscreenhabits.org. Click the podcast button and find this episode. Sarah, thank you so much for being here and for giving, giving, uh, voice and no, I wouldn't say agency, but giving urgency, voice and urgency for our youngest members who cannot speak for themselves.

Sarah Shepherd, PhD: (25:11)

Thank you so much. It's been great chatting.